In an act of goodwill, my father rang a bell for three hours on Christmas Eve for the Salvation Army to collect money for charity. I stood by as his wool coat rubbed my arm red under the Fred Meyer lights. I was old enough to know why we were there but the hanging red tin let everyone else in on the idea. We were doing something good and would soon be home. But what if we could do more, perhaps even from our homes?<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s look to another act of goodwill. It starts with a door in the front yard of a certain house on Radcliffe Road. MaryAnn Dlugosch doesn\u2019t lock this tiny glass door because it opens to a watertight, three-shelved, lending library for the community.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy library is always open, at least in the summer,\u201d she said as we sat in her home. \u201cI guess I would call them free libraries.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dlugosch is one of many silent custodians of little free libraries across the U.S. Todd Bol began the Little Free Library movement in 2009 in Hudson, Wisconsin. He built a model of a one room schoolhouse to honor his mother who was a teacher who loved to read. He filled the model with books and placed it in his front yard so neighbors could freely come by for something to read. The idea spread across the world. By June 2016, there were over 40,000 of these tiny libraries worldwide.<\/p>\n